Well, that’s a grandiose title. Sorry. I am not going to try to provide a complete courseware critique here. I’m just thinking about one thing that bothers me about the courseware we use at RIT (and which is true of most courseware systems)—it’s closed. Nobody but the students can see it.
Makes sense for grades, of course. But not for anything else. For years, I’ve kept syllabi online for my classes—which has helped not just my students, but also professors and students from other classes and schools, and people not affiliated with schools at all. It was “open source” information.
Now, RIT wants me to put all my course information into the proprietary courseware system that they’ve invested significant funds into. The problem is, it locks it all away. Not only does that not provide any benefits to my students, it has a negative impact on the overall identity of RIT by hiding what we do best—teaching.
MIT has the right idea, I think, with its Open Courseware project. Because it’s not the syllabus that’s the real value in your educational experience. It’s the guidance and support and encouragement and feedback that a good teacher provides. It’s the realization that maybe you don’t know everything already, and that constructive criticism from your professor might be more valuable than angry criticism from your boss or your client. It’s the opportunity to watch how others around you tackle a project, and learn from their successes and failures. It’s the social components, not the information components, that provide the most important lessons. (Which loops right back around to Joi Ito’s recent post about the primacy of context over content.)
So I’m not going to use the courseware this fall for my freshman multimedia class. I’m going back to my old(er) method of standard web-based distribution. (Yes, I know there are some broken queries in there. I’m working on it.) But I’m adding to that a class blog. And maybe…just maybe…a wiki, as well. We’ll see.
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"ItĚs the guidance and support and encouragement and feedback that a good teacher provides. ItĚs the realization that maybe you donĚt know everything already, and that constructive criticism from your professor might be more valuable than angry criticism from your boss or your client."
I have been expecting exactly this sort of input at RIT since my return, though my experience so far with the IT department is one filled with graders and TAs that therefore leaves little room for involvement between professor and student other than the uni-directional dissemination of course material.
After spending 10-40 hours on an assignment, if all a student receives for it is a letter grade, what benefit to her is it really?
The help you provided me with getting my blog up and running and the kind-hearted social aspect of many of your blog entries suggest that I have missed out thus far by not having the privilege of taking one of your course offerings.
Because of your earlier posts on courseware, I thought of you when I saw that Stephen Ramsay (English Department, University of Georgia) was running an open-source courseware package: Moodle.
I'd not heard of it before. See
http://cantor.english.uga.edu/moodle/index.php
Of course, the way he's running it, the classes are locked up, too, but presumably you would have more control over opening them up if you wanted to.
Agreed. After having battled with the two largest courseware products, I'm left cold. Yes, it's nice when they work, and there is a level of ease involved, but I hate the lock-in.
Many of our faculty publicly publish their syllabi, etc., outside of Blackbored, and then link to it from the course page. I am happy just go it alone. At least these days I don't have to write my own discussion system, which I did have to do a few years ago.
>>"...it’s not the syllabus that’s the real value in your educational experience. It’s the guidance and support and encouragement and feedback that a good teacher provides"
This is only part of the picture I feel. The real learning comes from engagement with peers, answering and listening to answers to 'dumb' questions - most asked by others, but needed by everyone, constructing replies, explaining to others and participating in dialog.
Most LMS and courseware pay (implicit?)homage to content when the true king is conversation.
Denham, I don't disagree. I tried to incorporate that into the rest of the post, but should have been more explicit about that as social interaction.
But conversation alone isn't enough, I think. There's still generally a need for some structure, some guidance, some feedback.
Professor Lawley I hope you understand how great it is for me, as a student, to have had the opportunity of having you (and many of your colleagues) as an instructor. Every time I read something on here related to your work and involvement at RIT I am always reminded of how much you genuinely care about your job and the guidance you provide. Thanks for all you've done and your continued support in the better interests of the students.
My teaching cookbook summarised:
First tell them what you are going to tell them (=syllabus).
Then tell them (=classes).
Then have them tell you what you told them (=feedback or exams).
Then tell them what you told them. (=correction and reinforcement).
Stu
PS: Blogged you this morning (26/7), Liz ,
in myof US education-system rant :)
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